As advances in all areas of computing continue

As advances in all areas of computing continue, tremendous amounts of data are being collected to gain deeper understanding of a problem domain. Computer graphics and visualization are invaluable technologies for extracting, conveying, and communicating the information contained within this data. Visualization is the process of representing data with images, and interacting with these images. The focus of visualization is on what images should be made to convey useful information about the data. Computer graphics, on the other hand, provides the mechanisms for creating these representations, i.e., how do we take the data and produce the desired images.

IBM Research's interest in these areas is long standing and has produced significant contributions including Mandelbrot's work on fractals, Appel's invention of ray tracing for rendering realistic images, Bresenham's scan conversion algorithms for lines and circles, Appel's hidden line algorithm, Mitchell and Goertzel's work on image compression for the CCITT Group 3 facsimile standard, and Pennebaker and Mitchell's work on the JPEG standard for still image data compression. Other contributions have included arithmetic coding, novel simplification, smoothing, compression, and meshing algorithms for handling complex 3D geometry, efficient visualization frameworks and systems for processing and viewing complex data models, digital watermarking images for copyright protection, parallel coordinates for visualizing multi-dimensional data, toolkits and perceptual experiments for creating accurate and effective visualizations, and contributions to the MPEG standards for delivering multimedia content.

There have been several projects related to the acquisition, representation, and processing of geometric and image data. The most notable of these have been the digital collection of high-resolution images for the Hermitage Museum and our effort to create a digital 3D model of Michelangelo's Florentine Pietà. Our work in these areas continues to be on the leading edge of graphics and visualization research. Most recently, we have focused on efficiently representing and manipulating geometric data using subdivision surfaces, and on optimizing texture map storage. Another recent trend in the graphics and visualization communities takes advantage of the significant processing power available in today's commodity processors and graphics adapters. By combining the power of many off-the-shelf products, very large data sets can be managed using parallel processing. Along these lines, our Deep View visualization system combines the processing, graphics, and networking power of a cluster of workstations to provide an inexpensive, parallel rendering, and video streaming system.

IBM Research's work in the graphics and visualization fields is distributed through publications in leading technical conferences, patent filings, standards participation, and customer engagements. We collaborate with top-ranked academic institutions (e.g. Stanford, NYU) in addition to our efforts within IBM with: Server Group, Printing Systems, Product Lifecycle Management, and High-Resolution Displays.

Recent Accomplishments:

Fred Mintzer has been elected President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He will begin a term as President Elect in 2002 and as President in 2004

Joan Mitchell, IBM Fellow, 2001

Gabriel Taubin, IEEE Fellow, 2001

Aleksandra Mojsilovic, IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award for 2001

Bernice Rogowitz, IS&T Fellow, 2000